I have been one of those people who work very hard to complete 90% of the work and then slack in the remaining 10%. The last 10% is the most simple yet the most important part of the project. Most often that not its the documentation of the effort or some times reporting status. Guess what doer of the last 10% gets the credit for the entire project.
The 10 percenter is usually very intelligent and hard working but is easily distracted by the opportunites that other get or the opportunites that he sees for himself to extend his knowledge or to enhance his skills. While working on a project, I reach at a point where I dont see myself adding anything to my skills and thats when I start losing interest. Some times i also feel that the project is at a point where anyone can take over and finish it and that it doesnt need me. I never noticed this in me until recently when one of my project managers pointed it out. I had always been missing out on documentation. Ofcourse documentation is not crux of the project as long as what has been coded works? Why waste time and effort? Even the development cycle developers say "Do not document unless necessary".
Some time later I was in a different situation. The project was almost ready for alpha - Testing when ther company underwent a re-organization. Some folks left our team and we had new ones joining. The folks that left were asked to start a new project and that made me excited. I wanted to be on the new team. Dont get me wrong, I loved the the team that I was on, it was just that I wanted to learn something new and something different. This was a clear indication of me being a ten percenter.
The first step to over come this problem is to identify if you are a ten percenter; to fix it is relatively eazy. That said, being a ten percenter, you should not ignore how you can improve. I have always been a ten percenter becasue I see an opportunity to learn new exciting things. Its not wrong to take a dive for the knowledge. The important part it "When". It took me some time to really understand even the current project has a lot to learn from. The first step I took towards my improvement was to totally ignore the new opportunites. I burried myself into the task at hand and tried to find ways to improve ways of my current project. That provided me the challange that I needed and masked unnecessary peeks into the new project. The second step was to start organizing the project details and maintaining a task list. The task list really improved my planning and I always had something. It also saved me time in the morning when I had to remember where I had left yesterday especially after the weekend. The project organization help the entire team. Every one was more familier with the tasks at hand.
The million dollar question as far as a team is concerned is how to identify a ten-percenter. To identify a ten-percenter already on the team is fairly straight forward; but when you have a new person in the intereview room, you have about 15 mins to judge. Most interviewies portray their best side but unless you know, the 10-percent side is really obvious. An attempt at a set of question can clearly identify if you are ten-percenter. In one of my interviews, I was given a set of 10 questions. I attempted those question in the order of simplicity. So the order was 1,5,6,8,4... May be thats an indication of being a ten percenter?
Damn, I am still a 10 percenter. I started this blog last year and havent finished it yet1
